By the simple ability to count, both forward and backward, students/non-musicians can reproduce vocal parts. This is a process/methodology of rapid non-note reading keyboard reproduction of choral parts/singular melodies. It is designed to allow users to instantaneously reproduce melodic and harmonic choral parts and other singular melodies. This process is useful for the independent learning of these melodic/harmonic parts. It reduces the necessity of constant rote re-teaching. Learning choral parts or singular melodies requires a degree of musical skill not usually found in school children or lay musicians. This usually leaves the choral instructor overwhelmed with the responsibility of continuously re-teaching parts, section-by-section.
Many sight-reading methodologies have been employed in an attempt to quickly prepare programs for public performance. They have not worked to great advantage because of the following: (1) the inconsistency of programs employed, (2)differing methodologies employed by changing personnel, and (3)high transient student populations. In fact, they work against the necessary instantaneity due to the fact that they are time-consuming in their need for constant alignment and uniformity. Also most methodologies require skills sufficient to avoid multiple instructor-led repetitions. These skills are not generally sufficiently developed in substantial portions of the student/lay population. This choral keyboarding process/methodology will provide a long sought after independence in non-note reading musical learning not heretofore seen.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,388,182 to Bermudez (2002) shows a music teaching method where a notation sheet (specially designed) is used to depict a song to be played by having numbers on the sheet correspond to the fingers of the hand (1–5) from thumb to pinkie). These match ten consecutive keys on the piano with other symbols to indicate both hands and the keyboard, whereby when the numbers appear, the fingers are depressed correspondingly. There is also an additional layer of fingering for additional range. It should be noted that because of the large number of notes that can be found in a melody, it is easier to define the octave range in a limited manner. Students/lay musicians will be able to simplify their reproduction of the same.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,380,470 to Fujiwara, et. al., (2002) is another training system for music performance, i.e., a keyboard musical instrument equipped with a training keyboard. This keyboard has “keys equal to a multiple of five assigned to the fingers of a trainee.” There is also an electronic sound generating system. While this system has multiple assignations of keys to fingers which it considers suitable for “stepwise improving of skills,” specialized equipment is still needed, allowing the student/lay musician without this equipment, to be robbed of the ability to function instantaneously and accurately on available equipment, utilizing standard readiness information.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,407,324 to Hulcher (2002) and U.S. Pat. No 3,379,087 to Weitzner (1968) devices are employed in an effort to familiarize the receiving audience with some musical conventions. Hulcher describes his patent as a piano instructional apparatus with LED's to identify what should be played and by which hand. Also the electronic ability to “encrypt a plurality of songs in the memory” denies any student/lay musician the musical experiences inherent in their intellectual participation in the manual repetition and individual involvement in the same. Weitzner (1968) describes an electrically operated display and cueing device utilized with lamps and coded marks, the same cueing display housed in “a separate cabinet adapted to be placed upon a piano, or other instrument.” Display windows, relays, coils, lighted lamps, colored lighted lamps, etc., would all need to be included. Again amateur musicians with little knowledge and no musical readiness and lack of this equipment would be unable to effectively participate in a total musical activity/experience. These devices, if available, could assist the non-musician, but, if relegated to the standard equipment, without benefit of lights, coils, relays, etc., musical experiences would be limited.
Bubar (1997), U.S. Pat. No. 5,685,7245 provides a system of teaching music which utilizes charts showing hand placement on the keyboard with instructions as to how the sheet music corresponds to the chart indicia. This method begins with chord playing accompanied by charts. This represents a logical order of musical complexity. Additional information related to “every other finger plays every other key” is assisted by charts. The charts are simple and easy to read, but without them the musical experiences are stymied and limited particularly without the establishment of visual/tactile stimuli unrelated to the charts.
John C. Bostelmann (1940), U.S. Pat. No. 2,188,098 is an additional patent with a chart for piano playing but again students/lay musicians who depend on charts, lights, or other external devices will fail to develop the necessary visual/tactile “readiness” connections for the octave manipulations necessary to melodic reproductions.
A piano chart in U.S. Pat. No. 201,030, F. E. Mason (1878) and a similar device cited in U.S. Pat. No. 4,905,567 Kavorklis (1990) is shown, but again with the actual device, visual/tactile “readiness” connections are not made. These devices are strictly related to location of notes and do not clarify the advancements reachable through the various manipulations of the notes.
In conclusion, this choral keyboarding methodology developed for participants who cannot read music provides a director with the degree of independence and instantaneity in learning by his/her participants.